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SUPERSCRIPTS AND THE DATE

Question: Marie Echavarri, College of the Canyons, Santa Clarita, California, notices that more people are using superscript th, rd, and st after the day of the month when writing the date with the year (December 15th, 2009). She says that she has seen it in TV advertisements, college distribution announcements, and correspondence. When she talked with colleagues about this usage, some justified it by pointing out that MS Word automatically changes dates to include the ordinals. Has this usage rule changed, she asks?

Dr. Guffey: No, nothing has changed. Perhaps the programmers of MS Word think they are doing users a favor by automatically inserting a superscript ordinal (December 15th) whenever a date is keyed. It does look spiffy. But it's not correct! Standard United States usage for dates requires no ordinal (th, rd, st) when the day follows the month (May 1, June 3, July 14). Only when the day appears alone or precedes the month is the ordinal used (on the first, on the third of June, on the 14th of July). Of course, when we speak, we do express the ordinals. But when we write, the ordinal disappears. Unfortunately, the programmers at Microsoft are not known for their language expertise. Savvy U.S. users have turned off the AutoCorrect default in Word 2003 and Word 2007 that superscripts an ordinal after the day of the month.

CLASSIC MISPLACED MODIFIER - CHEW TOY WALKS INTO OFFICE

Question: Gifford Walker, Fountainhead College of Technology in Knoxville, writes that he is appalled by the continued deterioration of language usage within the news media. He usually can determine what is wrong, but while he was reading a CNN news story about the incidence of falls caused by house pets, this sentence struck him:

At least once a week, a patient injured by an overexcited dog or an unexpected chew toy walks into the office of Dr. Leon S. Benson, an orthopedic surgeon and chief of hand surgery at the North Shore University Health System in Evanston, Illinois.

Gifford asks, what's the problem here?

Dr. Guffey: This delicious blooper suffers from a double whammy: a misplaced modifier in an overloaded sentence. Modifiers must be close to the words they describe or explain. In addition, sentences should not be packed with excessive information. Here is a suggested revision that breaks the clumsy sentence into two parts:

At least once a week, orthopedist Leon S. Benson, M.D., treats a patient who has been injured by an overexcited dog or who has tripped over an unexpected chew toy. Dr. Benson is chief of hand surgery at the North Shore University Health System in Evanston, Illinois.

SEND PHOTO WITH RÉSUMÉ?

Question: Paula Roddy, Weatherford College in Texas, asks how to handle this assignment. She has her students create a résumé packet to be sent to a company that "values and expects exceptional grooming." The California company does not schedule interviews but bases its decision on packets submitted by applicants. Students asked whether they should include a picture of themselves, knowing that "a toned body resulting from a rigorous workout schedule and natural good looks would really pay off in this instance."

Dr. Guffey: As you know, we generally tell job candidates to avoid sending photos because it may prejudice recruiters positively or negatively. In addition, many larger companies figure that the best way to avoid charges of discrimination is to tell applicants not to submit photos. However, when a company specifically requests well-groomed individuals, a photo would seem to meet the job requirements. Although this is a hypothetical situation, in the real world it would be wise for candidates to check with the company's human resources staff to determine whether the company has a policy against accepting photos in candidate applications. If no such policy exists, then including a photo would qualify as part of the job requirements.

PUNCTUATION

Question: What happened to the periods in Ph.D., M.D., and R.N.?

Dr. Guffey: Styles and usage change over the years. One continuing trend is toward simplification. People writing abbreviations want to do it quickly and efficiently. As a result, periods begin to disappear. When enough people are no longer using periods in abbreviations, such as in PhD, that usage becomes the norm. Modern usage, as cited in The Chicago Manual of Style, now favors the omission of periods in PhD, MD, and RN. Abbreviations that appear in all capital letters are generally formatted without periods or spaces, such as CPA, MBA, IBM, CBS, CNN, and USPS. This doesn't mean, of course, that it's wrong to write Ph.D. with periods, as in the past. However, you will look way cooler if you drop the periods!

SERVICE LEARNING

Question: Mary Heikkinen, Lake-Sumter Community College in Leesburg, Florida, writes that her college is encouraging all instructors to consider including a service learning component in their courses. She would "love" to offer this kind of opportunity to her business communication students, and she considering two ideas:

• Work with nonprofits to write letters to businesses to ask for donations of goods and services. For example, students could ask for donations of toiletries to create personal kits for distribution to homeless families.
• Write persuasive letters/essays for nonprofits to alert the community of the organization's mission and needs.

She wants to keep this a "small" activity that would draw students out into the community but not require a huge amount of class time. Any additional ideas, she asks?

Dr. Guffey: Introducing service learning into the curriculum seems a natural fit for business communication. Many instructors are already using service learning projects to provide real experiences for students. If you need a small project, consider approaching nonprofit or other organizations in your community to ask whether they have any writing tasks that your students could perform. Organizations may need press releases, job descriptions, sets of instructions, policies, procedures, or letters. They may need revision of current documents. They might need to be instructed in proper e-mail etiquette and procedures. Perhaps your students could provide a short in-service training session teaching best practices in e-mail.  Think of the possibilities in teaching do's and don'ts of e-mail! Hope this helps!

Question: I'm completely lost when it comes to knowing how to write e-mail. Is it hyphenated or not? Is it ever capitalized?

Dr. Guffey:  E-mail is a disputed spelling. Some publications and organizations prefer e-mail (with a hyphen), and others insist on email (without a hyphen). I prefer e-mail with a hyphen because both Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11e, and The Chicago Manual of Style favor the hyphen. But an organization calling itself the "E-Mail Experience Council" decreed that the official spelling of email should henceforth be recognized without the hyphen. This self-appointed arbiter claims that it is a professional organization comprised of marketers of brands and products, service providers, consultants, technology providers, and agencies. Its mission is to "enhance the images of email marketing and digital value." Unfortunately, organizations cannot decree spelling and usage. 

To examine actual usage, I conducted an informal survey of the use of e-mail and email. Who uses what?

• The New York Times uses e-mail
• Computer World uses e-mail
• The Financial Times and USA Today use e-mail
• Apple, Google, and Yahoo use email
• Facebook uses email
• Wall Street Journal uses email
• Microsoft uses both e-mail and email
• U.S. News & World Report uses E-mail !